1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for retrieving a print job, which is a file or set of files that can be submitted to be printed out by a printing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a client personal computer (PC) performs reprinting by first storing in the client PC a print job which the client PC sent to a printing apparatus. The client PC later re-sends the print job to the printing apparatus to execute the print job. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-228011 discusses another method of reprinting in which a print job is stored in a hard disk (HD) of a printing apparatus, and a user later instructs the printing apparatus to reprint the stored print job.
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-228011, a plurality of print jobs is stored in a HD of the printing apparatus, and a user can later instruct the printing apparatus to reprint a desired print job.
However, it is burdensome for a user to find the desired print job when there is a plurality of print jobs stored in the HD. To solve such a problem, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 09-233239 discusses a technology for retrieving a print job desired by a user. By using the technology discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 09-233239, a user can designate the IP address of a source, such that print jobs can be narrowed down to jobs from a specific source.
Print jobs as described above can be stored in various locations (areas), such as a client PC, in addition to the HD in the printing apparatus. Therefore, when a user retrieves a desired print job, it is useful that print job retrieval can be flexibly performed according to the various storage locations of the print jobs.
Moreover, when a user performs retrieval of a print job from various locations, the size of a job attribute value (such as a limit on the number of characters in a character string) that is provided by a printing apparatus may differ from that of a job attribute value that is provided by a client PC.
For example, a printing apparatus stores a received job in a HD. On the other hand, the printing apparatus caches job information in a read-only memory (RAM) to improve the performance. Job information, such as a job name or a user name, is used for displaying the stored job on a displaying operation unit. If the HD is accessed and scanned every time the printing apparatus displays job information, the speed of displaying job information decreases. On the other hand, a data storage area that is allocated to a RAM for storing job information is small. Therefore, a printing apparatus controls the amount of job information by, for example, setting a certain limit to the length of a job name.
Furthermore, the size of a job name character string that can be displayed on an operation panel of the printing apparatus may be limited to some extent as compared to that on a monitor of a client PC. Therefore, the job information size in a client PC may differ from that in a printing apparatus.
Moreover, a job has a plurality of job attributes, and the length limit of a character string may differ with each job attribute. For example, it is likely that character string lengths of a job name and a user name are different (i.e., the maximum length of a user name is likely to be shorter than that of a job name). In such a case, a character string length limit is not set to correspond to the longest length limit of a job attribute. Instead, since a character string of a user name is assumed to be shorter than that of a job name, the length limit of a user name may be set as a smaller value. Similarly, in a case where a plurality of job attributes (such as job name and user name) are set as search target job attributes, the desired job cannot be extracted if the same search string is compared to character strings that correspond to all search target job attributes.